I briefly worked for a hotel restaurant where the manager insisted that the lowest-level front-of-house staff at least have an associate's (2-year) degree. His reasoning was that they were interacting with the guests and needed to be reasonably well-spoken.

He did not manage to reason that the reason why he had higher-than-usual staff turnover was that, for someone with a college degree, waiting tables was the dead-end-job to make ends meet while searching for a better position, not something they were ever planning on sticking with long-term.

I think he's also missing the point of what's covered in most colleges, since rhetoric is no longer part of the required curriculum. From accounting to zoology, there aren't a lot of classes that will make someone well-spoken if they weren't already.

*wondering suddenly whether he had a college degree, and if so, in what*

Logged

Any advice that requires the use of a time machine may safely be ignored.

I briefly worked for a hotel restaurant where the manager insisted that the lowest-level front-of-house staff at least have an associate's (2-year) degree. His reasoning was that they were interacting with the guests and needed to be reasonably well-spoken.

He did not manage to reason that the reason why he had higher-than-usual staff turnover was that, for someone with a college degree, waiting tables was the dead-end-job to make ends meet while searching for a better position, not something they were ever planning on sticking with long-term.

I think he's also missing the point of what's covered in most colleges, since rhetoric is no longer part of the required curriculum. From accounting to zoology, there aren't a lot of classes that will make someone well-spoken if they weren't already.

*wondering suddenly whether he had a college degree, and if so, in what*

Not that college trains you to speak, but professors do demand that the work you turn in displays a certain amount of grammatical correctness, and learning better written grammar usually comes with an improvement in your speaking patterns.

The trouble is, it's very difficult to know exactly what you want to do and how at 17.

And no one says you have to go to college at 17.If someone has no interest in any occupation that requires a college education, it's taking a crap shoot to send them to college just to take some classes and explore. Some students will find themselves, others will flunk out. I had an advisee expelled for having a GPA of .2 this year. No, the decimal is not in the wrong place. I've seen it happen too many times with kids sent to college because they'd graduated high school, when they had no idea what they wanted to do, or study. So they sat in the student union and played cards during class, because no one was going to make them go to class. I remember telling this young man that the University could and would expell him for bad grades, and he was stunned. He felt like as long as he could pay the bills, he should be able to make whatever grades he wanted to. Would it be in his favor for the school to take that attitude, and let him exhaust his financial aid while creating so many hours of F that it would take him years to re-take those classes? If you don't know where you're going, getting in your car and driving in any old direction probably isn't going to get you to your destination. Likewise, if a student really doesn't know what he wants to do, taking a few years to work and make up his mind isn't a bad plan. Or taking a vo-tech course, and having a trade at which to work while he attends college. If you know you want to do A, B, C, or D, and all of them require a college degree, then yes, start to college, take some classes in those departments, and make a choice. There's nothing wrong with changing your career plan after you start college but I sure don't recommend sending a kid who has NO idea what he wants to do or study.

The trouble is, it's very difficult to know exactly what you want to do and how at 17.

I'm 28 and I still have no clue what I want to do.

Heck, I'm 37 and still floundering.

59 here. and ditto.

I went straight to college from HS and dropped out. I wanted to take a gap year and find a job but I was told that if I did that, I would never go to college. Now it seems as if the gap year is becoming more and more accepted.

The problem is that students are being advised by people who never left school. My senior guidance counselor said when she retired that she had been in school since the age of 5, either as student, teacher, or counselor.

Logged

"The Universe puts us in places where we can learn. They are never easy places, but they are right. Wherever we are, it's the right place and the right time. Pain that sometimes comes is part of the process of constantly being born." - Delenn to Sheridan: "Babylon 5 - Distant Star"